《动物之梦》的时空经验与地方重构

美国西南区域因其混杂的族裔话语、跨域的地区特色、历史与现代交织、传统与进步对立统一的杂糅性文化特征,成为美国当代文学界多元文化生产的聚焦场域。被评论界誉为"向西发展的南方作家"的芭芭拉·金索沃,在文学创作中以个体的微观历史书写地方价值,反映西南区域的社会现实与文化景观。本文以金索沃美国笔会西部小说获奖作品《动物之梦》为研究对象,论证情感化的时空经验与地方重建的关联。地理与精神空间的流动将线性时间重组从而建构循环时间,使人物能够立足现实,认知过去与未来的辩证关系,重塑个体历史、消弭身份危机。文本叙事所再现的时空生产、权力结构与地方意识之间的话语模式,反映作者有关生命、时间、空间、区域的现代性思考。

American southwest is a central site for cultural production of contemporary American literature for its ethnic hybridity, transcendence over regionalism and a mixture of tradition and modernity. Referred to as a southerner making way to the west, Barbara Kingsolver, a contemporary American female author, conceptualizes place in the light of a macro-history of individuals to present social realities and cultural landscape of the southwest. This article examines Animal Dreams, a Pen/US American West Fiction Award winner, to explore the connections between spatiotemporal experientiality and reconstruction of place. Spatial mobility in both geographical and spiritual scales reorganizes linear time and thus constructs cyclical time. In this way, the heroine in the novel is granted the cognition of a dialectical relation of past and future based on reality for a renewal of personal history and a revival from identity crisis. The textual representation of a discourse between time and space production, power politics and place consciousness reflects the writer’s rethinking of modern assumptions about life, time, space and region.